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Can King George III Please Bring Me Some BBQ?

It’s another national holiday I’m missing due to work obligations! So everyone – hop aboard the Bitter Bus to thesinglecell’s 4th of July! There won’t be fireworks, but I still might blow some stuff up!

I can’t call it Independence Day, because I have yet to liberate myself from this job.

Let me state very clearly right up front that I am well aware of how many people don’t have jobs, and I certainly count myself fortunate not to be among them. I take that seriously, and on my worst days, my relief at being gainfully employed has served as my consolation. My heart breaks for people who can’t find work, and given that I’ve been looking for alternative employment for two years, I know it’s incredibly difficult. So everything that follows really is not borne of me being unappreciative of my employment; rather, it is borne of my employers being unappreciative of their employees. You’ll find that much of this reads as an anti-management rant. Understand: I have chosen, against the recommendations of colleagues, not to be a manager in my business because it frankly lacks any and all trace of anything enjoyable. Therefore, I have a certain respect for the poor fools who have ascended the ranks to those management positions. Also understand: this is not a general gripe about all managers across the board. It’s just about the ones in my business (and I’ve worked for LOTS in my three jobs within my 14-year career).

I work in a business that never takes a holiday. And yes, I knew this when I signed up. Back then, when I loved the thrill of my job and thought that every day was just full of fun challenges to conquer, I felt that having to work socially prohibitive hours on every single blessed freaking holiday was a small price to pay for being able to do something I loved.

God, I was an idiot.

No… I’m kidding. I truly did love my career for the first ten years of it, solid, and maybe for another two after that, but slightly less. Then some stuff happened right at the same time as I apparently hit my limit on Days I Don’t Mind Having Chest Pain and/or Crying On the Drive Home, and my feelings on the issue took a decided turn for the worse.

And yet, here I sit, working on another holiday. I have not had one single holiday off in the three years I’ve worked at this job, and I can’t remember before that. Not Christmas. Not Thanksgiving. Not Labor Day (irony, anyone?) or Memorial Day. Not New Year’s Eve or Day. Not even Halloween.

Wait. Maybe Easter, 2009. I might have had that day off. But I’m not kidding. That was it.

And I am, as you likely have come to sense, totally over the crap I thought about it being worth it. Don’t get me wrong; I’m willing to work almost every holiday. The only ones I ever actually ask to have off are Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Fat lot of good that does me.

And so, on this July 4th, I would like to point out a few of King George III’s abuses and usurpations documented in our great nation’s Declaration of Independence and disturbingly similar to those carried out by my employers.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them

Nothing gets done if the decisions are left to the managers. Nuh. Thing. And yet, the decisions have to be left to the managers. Because they’re the managers, and we are the underlings who can’t decide anything because, even though we have equal or superior skills at both theory and application, and equal or greater experience, it shows excess gumption (initiative is encouraged by lip service only).

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

I live an hour away and have had to come in for meetings either several hours early or on my days off. Granted, my living an hour away is my choice. But as the meetings are generally stupid, I think I should be excused from them, or allowed to attend via conference call.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

I don’t have any examples to back this up. We don’t have any Representative Houses unless you count unions, and my bosses can’t dissolve those. I just giggle when I read “opposing with manly firmness his invasions.” Is that an implicit opposition to gay marriage?

Okay. Next:

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

At varying levels, we’ve been forbidden from hiring, no matter how understaffed we are. We don’t have enough people to do what we do. It’s chronic, and in our business, it’s crippling and it subverts (old English word) our efficacy (another one!) by compromising our abilities. Not that anyone cares. Example: the manager who does schedules somehow managed to not schedule anyone to do one of the two most important, all-consuming and challenging jobs of the day yesterday. Which meant I got a phone call at 10:30am from another underling, telling me that the manager had told her to tell me that I had to do that job in addition to the one I was scheduled to do. Which meant I had to cancel my pre-work plans to go in early and do way too much, on an occasion for which we were critically understaffed and therefore I had no help. Management fail=my problem.

Also, with regard to the migrations hither: they refused to pay for me to move when I got hired here. They used to pay for those kinds of things.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

Does the phrase “my way or the highway” mean anything to you?

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

Management vs. underlings. Management always wins. Pisses me off.

Now, stay with me here:

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

When part of our company that has nothing to do with us shut down and had to lay off union workers, the company forced us to absorb the more senior workers into our place, where they took over the jobs of other underlings who got laid off, and immediately began to suck at said jobs, since the jobs were not material to their previous jobs and they had no idea what they were doing.

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

Let’s just say someone nearly cost me my job and did cause me quite a bit of anxiety just because he’s a widely recognized poophead, and my spineless bosses, who told me to my face several times before the ultimate action that they didn’t like the poophead, then for official purposes sided with said poophead and gave me a choice: get fired or take a huge demotion.

Wow. I wrote that just like Thomas Jefferson would have. Lots of commas and everything.

Whereas:
This series of abuses and usurpations has led unbidden to a life of servitude compensated by only legally required wages and largely ineffective health insurance at my cost,

And whereas:
I have to work every flipping holiday ever instituted in the history of holidays, be they minor or major, PLUS weekends, and my supposedly regular days off frequently are changed on a whim and without consultation,

And whereas:Said abuse and usurpation has directly or indirectly contributed to loss of relations with friends, family and significant others,

And whereas:
I have this day been denied the barbecue, potato salad, macaroni salad and deviled eggs that were rightfully to have been mine,

I hereby, while in full and understood possession of my Big Girl “Just Deal With It” Panties, and being in no way too big for said britches, but rather having worn them out from their oft-required usage, declare my intended independence.

Not unlike the actual Declaration of Independence, this personal declaration shall not be signed by signatories until such time as all parties are agreed (aka when I have found another job).

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12 thoughts on “Can King George III Please Bring Me Some BBQ?”

I don’t blame you for being more than miffed! Employers would get so much more out of their employees if they gave them more consideration. I know everyone in an organization may not be able to all be off at the same time, but surely there could be a rotation so everyone would get a few holidays off during the year.

I am empathetic to your having to work. I used to be a 911 dispatcher when my kids were younger. The shifts worked well with my husband being able to get them up for school and I would get home around 3:00 in the afternoon…well unless I was in the middle of working an emergency.
I knew when I took the job it was 365 days a year that have to be covered. Still on Christmas Day or Thanksgiving Day I would sit at the console and be sad that I was there waiting for the console to light up and other people were home with their families.

I continued to work there for several years but I quit being a dispatcher after only one of those years. I hope you find the job that is right for you soon.

Thank you. Yes; you worked in one of those 24/7 businesses, too. And a very tense one! I understand exactly what you mean about waiting for the calls to come in (which usually means something bad has happened on a holiday to someone’s family or home)… makes you feel bad and jealous at the same time. I really have been lucky to have loved what I did for so long. It’s just one of those things you have to love, and anything less is going to drive you slowly insane. (See evidence in blog posts!)

I don’t know if you’ll find this amusing or not, given the extremely high quality of this rant (and A+ rant, I would say, even by my Inner Curmudgeon’s standards). I was thinking today that holidays are not as much fun now that I’ve retired because they are not holidays from anything. I guess that sounds like a pretty pathetic complaint. I’ve been incredibly fortunate in that respect and I guess I’ve never really appreciated it. This was a very powerful post … I’m sitting here really feeling for you … and wishing you better.

Aw, thanks! I felt kinda b—-y writing/posting it (I really wasn’t angry yesterday – I was angry Sunday when I got the call that someone had seriously dropped the ball and it was left to me to pick it up)… I don’t like people who have attitude problems about their jobs. For me, it’s just 14 years that have added up, and I’ve realized it. But your point makes sense, too… that holidays aren’t holidays when you’re off every day.

I feel your pain, and had extra helpings of chocolate cake this holiday on your behalf. I want to know if your employer is endeavouring to prevent your populating the state, and if so, what measures they are taking?

Nicely done. They’re a bunch of jackaninnies who don’t deserve you. I do feel your pain with the holidays. I get the ones off that happen on Mondays, because that’s my normal day off. Which also means I don’t get paid for those, because that’s my normal day off. When I was on the road, we travelled on Mondays, which somehow didn’t count as “work” even though you didn’t go “home”. At any rate, at some point you wake up and realize that you’re allowed to have a life outside of your gig, whatever it is, and I hope that your next job lets you do that.

Mine.

The stuff you read on this site is mine. My ideas, my thoughts, my writing. Unless it sucks. Then you can claim it.
You know what, though? I'd rather you just not take any of it.
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